I didn't plan to be an essayist, a blogger. I started with the idea of discussing meditation and being more aware of what is on one's mind. What can be more apt for examination, rumination, philosophizing that what just happened? I was aware of Michel de Montaigne long before I learned to see him as one who examined his life and times. Over the years, I became more aware of his reputation and the example he set for many subsequent writers.
I have been focused on the London writer and librarian Sarah Bakewell and her book "How to Live", a question to which she give 20 answers she found in Montaigne's writings. Each answer or set of answers has its own chapter in her book. Here are Bakewell's first four answers:
1. Q. How to live? A. Don't worry about death
2. Q. How to live? A. Pay attention
3. Q. How to live? A. Be born
4. Q. How to live? A. Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted
Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Kindle Locations 29-36). Other Press. Kindle Edition.
I was very surprised to pass a downtown bookstore today and see in the window "Montaigne in Barn Boots: A Amateur Ambles through Philosophy" by Michael Perry. First chance I got, I downloaded the Kindle version of the book. We read his "Population: 485", non-fiction about living a western Wisconsin town and being part of the local volunteer fire brigade. We read his novel "The Jesus Cow", a calf is born on a Wisconsin farm with the silhouette of Jesus on its side. Perry is a good writer and a good speaker. He is original and intelligent, much like Montaigne several centuries earlier.
Asking myself what has happened today and writing out an answer in civil, honest language tends to give me a chance to think about what I think. When I reflect and compose at the computer, I have good access to my previous writings, to my books and to Google and other search engines.
The musing of Montaigne, Bakewell and Perry make me feel I am in good company.
